I believe there were several named hurricanes in the months before Katrina hit last year, but this year I recall hearing of only one major storm several weeks ago that petered out before it could hit the USA (near Florida, I think). Nothing else.

Is this unusual by this time of year? Or have I not been paying attention?

We have not had a single hurricane so far this year in the Atlantic. 3 tropical storms, no hurricanes. However, there is a new wave that just formed off the coast of Africa. It's looking like it'll develope.

Well, our quiet days in the Atlantic didn't last very long, as it's time to talk about a new threat area. A very vigorous tropical wave has moved off the coast of Africa today, and has the potential to develop into a tropical depression later this week. The waters under the wave are 27-28 C, which is .5-1.5 degrees C above the 26.5 C threshold for tropical cyclone formation--not great, but good enough. Wind shear is a modest 10 knots. There is a large area of dry air and Saharan dust to the wave's north, and this will likely be the major inhibiting factor for this wave.

Both the GFS and NOGAPS models develop the wave into a tropical storm; the UKMET does not. The GFS predicts the storm will pass well north of the Lesser Antilles Islands.

Problem is that there is next yr, and the next yr, and the next yr, and...

>>I've taken a look at the past 126 seasons (1880-2005) and captured some interesting statistics. First, the easy stuff: 25% of a season's total number of named storms occurs on or before August 15th, so statistically this would yield 12 named storms for this season since we've already had 3 tropical storms this year. But I also found that if the 3rd named storm occurred on or before August 1st, on average the season would have 13 named storms - but is this really an average season?

Just for fun, I learned that there have been 14 seasons prior to this one that started off with 3 tropical storms - and for all of those seasons, the average was 10 named storms including 4 hurricanes of which 2 were major hurricanes. The last season that started this way was 2002 - as a matter of fact 2002 started with six straight tropical storms and had a season total of 12/4/2. The 4th storm of that year was named on August 29th.

So I started to wonder what Climatology would think about this season if the next storm this year was not named until after August 25th - and the answers are interesting (if you like numbers). In the past 126 seasons, 74 of them did not have the 4th named storm until after August 25th. Nothing unusual there - seems like a common event, but what do the season totals look like when that happens?

Another interesting answer. The average season total is 8/5/2, with the highest seasons at 14/6/4 (1953) and 13/10/8 (1950). This means that in order for Colorado State (Dr Gray et al) to hit its revised forecast of 15 named storms this season, the next named storm must occur before August 26th...OR...the Atlantic basin must set a new record for season activity after August 25th.

I decided to take this statistical investigation one step further. What happens (no matter when the 4th storm occurs) if the 5th storm does not get named until after September 10th (the climatological peak of the season)? It turns out that this happens one-third of the time (42 of the last 126 seasons) - still somewhat common. When this happens, the season totals decrease to 7/4/1 on average, with the highest seasons at 11/5/1 (1898) and 10/5/2 (1943). I also discovered that there has only been one season (1968) where the 4th storm occurred before August 26th and the 5th storm occurred after September 10th. In other words, if the 4th storm happens late, usually the 5th storm does as well, but if the 4th storm happens earlier that August 26th, the 5th storm happens before September 10th.>more:http://flhurricane.com /

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